Go Retire Psychiatrist

By now everybody’s seen the recently released declassified UFO files and gone back to watching the old movies like Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” which I watched night before last on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Of course, Spielberg’s new movie, “Disclosure Day” is coming out this month coincided perfectly with release of the UFO files.

I’d forgotten that this iconic film was released in 1977. I never saw it when it first came out. That was a big year for me and Sena. That was the year I interrupted my studies at Huston-Tillotson College in Austin, Texas, Sena and I got married, and I eventually transferred credit to Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa where I got a Bachelor’s degree in Distributed Studies Medical Technology program combining studies in chemistry, microbiology, and zoology which led to a brief career in general hospital medical laboratory, and eventually landed me in medical school.

There was a lot going on so, the first time for me to see the full movie was a couple of nights ago. TCM shows movies without commercial breaks, which I thought meant that my bladder capacity would be tested. But I got through it just fine. I didn’t remember much of the first half hour of the film. But I do remember the town hall meeting in which officials try to quash the idea that residents saw UFOs. When Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) says “You can’t fool us by agreeing with us,” I thought that might be a tipping point—but then some geezer gets up and announces, “I saw Bigfoot once” and launches into a yarn about it that pretty much makes the debunking job of the officials unnecessary.

When I first saw this movie, the cameo appearance of Dr. J. Allen Hynek toward the end made no impression on me because I’d never heard of him. Dr. Hynek studied UFOs and his work helped inspire “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

But he was immediately recognizable last night, mainly because I’ve seen a lot of footage in the plethora of UFO and Bigfoot copycat TV programs which have been sharing dozens of paranormal video clips. They’re always blurry and pretty unconvincing, in my opinion.

So, why do I keep watching them? Mainly because, like Agent Fox Mulder in the X-Files, I want to believe. I have remained skeptical, but here’s my thing: I don’t go out into the deep woods anywhere, especially in the middle of the night. Oh sure, I’ll tell you it’s because I don’t want to be eaten by a bear, but in my heart of hearts, I think “What would I do if I actually see Bigfoot, or a UFO, or angels dancing on the head of a pin? So, most of the time, I don’t openly scoff at the idea of UFOs.

While watching the end of the movie, it seemed to show Roy Neary being the only astronaut being chosen to enter the alien ship. I didn’t see the inside of the mothership, but I vaguely recalled seeing an ending years ago in which he entered it and the interior was vast and his reaction to it didn’t seem as uplifting as the ending I saw last night. So, I looked up alternate endings for the movie and it turns out it does exist. In fact, I saw web entries mention 3 alternate versions of the ending. I think the one I saw was the one in the YouTube clip, which I think Spielberg released in 1980. That might have been the only one I saw. I liked the one I saw the other night.